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Here's a short list of Linux flaws that make it look silly:

* /usr/include/linux (come on. honestly.) Lame. Nonstandard. (for the clue-deprived, this means that any code written for linux using the linux/ headers will be incompatible with all other Unix flavors.) Guess what: string.h, types.h, malloc.h, signal.h, and so-on don't belong in a platform-specific include directory. Hope you didn't want to port your code...
* Neither the sigaction manpage nor the signal.h includs indicate what the system defaults are. Of course, they've put signal.h in /usr/include/linux...
* "intro" manpages are a joke. Compare the BSD section 2 intro with the one from Linux.
* file systems mount async by default (power outage and your fs dies)
* Most linux users don't have pubes yet and are intolerably lame (3Y3 4m 1337 H4x0r d00d [uz 3y3 h4v3 L1Nux!)
* Too many things in user space that belong in the kernel (nfs)
* Too many things in the kernel that belong in user space (java)
* No standard distribution. Linux people say this is a good thing? Try writing software or software configuration instructions when you never know how the OS is going to be laid out, or try finding the responsible party for a block of OS code, or try fixing security problems when they arise and you'll see that this is NOT a good thing at all.
* no consistant pronunciation the os'es name (line-ucks? lynn-ucks?)
* svr4? bsd? make up your mind?
* Lame NFS & dd
* #linux, #hack, #linuxwarez...
* New kernel every week that breaks half your applications
* Security flaw/Root compromise of the week (see below)
* glibc? libc? libc5? libc6? glibc2?
* /bin/sh != sh; /bin/sh == bash. Lame. Nonstandard. Result: broken shell scripts and nonportable code.
* /usr/bin/make != make; /usr/bin/make == gmake. Lame. Nonstandard. Same result as above: nonportable code.
* ext2fs
* Linux will mount partitions that are not clean
* can't handle partitions > 2GB (i've hear they finally fixed this one)
* e2fsck deliberatly leaves/creates corrupt files (if there is a block that it duplicate between two files, e2fsck will clone the duplicate (while fsck will remove both files. This can also result in a user gaining unauthorized access to another user's data.))
* it swap likes swap to swap swap too swap often swap
* only allows 128M of swap at a time; for a 1G of swap, you need 8 swap partitions
* can't handle more than 1GB of RAM
* To install Joe's program, you need Bob's kernel hack, but for Bob's kernel hack, you've got to have Suzy's patches, but Suzy's patches only work with a year-old kernel, unless you get Mike's patches to Suzy's patches, but even then, those conflict with Jeff's drivers, which can be resolved only by installing Nancy's patches...
* Can't handle the same IP on more than one interface
* Can't handle large files
* Max file size: 2GB. (*BSD: 4 Terabytes)
* Dynamically linked root shell. Doom!
* lilo! any boot loader that needs to have magic block numbers is wrong
* linux icmp.h is *NOT* unix icmp.h - they're totally incompatible.
* flatfile password files make listing large ftp directories impossible due to huge numbers of flatfile searchces.
* password file can be non-shadowed - encrypted passwords visible to all
* shadow.h! hahahahahahaha!
* Slowass network code
* Did I mention slowass network code?
* Oh, also slowass network code
* Miserably pathetic threading implementation doesn't scale for shit: all threads wake up on signals (stampeding process problem).
* L1nux c0d3rz!
* LILO can't cope with kernels > 1Mb, so the kernel has to be gzipped.
* strfry and memfrob
* Can't cope with hard drives > 32GB
* GPL - a license and a virus
* Fundamental design and direction problems. It turns out that Linus is not the smartest man in the world and the saviour of all mankind.
* OS or religion?
* UNABLE TO LOAD INTERPRETER...memory leak much?
* This is a real Linux error message: Uhhh. NMI recieved. Dazed and Confused. Trying to cope ...such professionalism!
*The GNU su manpage actually says this:
This program does not support a "wheel group" that restricts who can su to super-user accounts, because that can help fascist system administrators hold unwarranted power over other users. ...apparently it's better for any user to attack the root password than to offer added security. Ignorance of security is a common Linux thread.
* vi != vi; vi == vim. vim links to X libraries. Wipe X, and now you can't use vi. Retards.
* Still no USB support in 2000, after NetBSD and FreeBSD have had it for nearly 2 years. So much for the "million geeks" theory of rapid software development.
* Always trying to help you hold your weewee when you're going tinkle.
* No version control used to manage the system.

FreeBSD NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Have a nice day!

It doesnt require you to use the BSD license for derivative works

The "simplified" BSD license (FreeBSD license)


Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1.Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.


So, if redistribution of modified code is permitted provided "redistributions of(/in) source code(/binary form) must retain(/reproduce) the above copyright notice..." how can you magically change one license into another license?

"Compatible license" as listed on the GNU site does not mean wholesale theft of licensed code.

What's with the " Show me! I'm too lazy, or stupid to look for it myself, do it for me! ", you've not even bothered to look.

Well I already did tell you where to get it, I posted the address of the Darwin FAQ. If that's too difficult for you to follow, the address is below.

Note they don't sell it, they *give it away*. You can download or just show up at any MacWorld and they will give you a shiny CD you can take home.

Go to www.apple.com, click on the tab "Mac OS X", the click on "Darwin" on the toolbar to check it out for yourself.

Or if your really lazy, just get it from here:

http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/1. 4/release/darwinx86-141.iso.gz

File size is: 230 MB

MD5 Sum is: 6610cc775144bd8ddeccf5bf194c1945

You can get GNU software from here: http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/x86/

FreeBSD Ports work just fine on Darwin too: http://www.freebsd.org/ports/

Are you honestly so ignorant about this you don't realise that Mac OS X on PPC is a port of OpenStep on x86? It's like everybody knows but you....

You don't get Apple's Window Manger for free of course but then you dont get the Sun's Window Manager unless you pay them for it, and you don't get SGI's Window Manager unless you pay them for it - and neither of *them* give their OS away for free.

So, the only part you'll miss that's not in Darwin on x86 but is in Mac OS X on PPC will be the Window Manager (Which is called Quartz), but XFree86 works just fine and you can run Gnome 1.4 for a pretty desktop.

You can get the overhaul here.

Because of benchmarks like this? (Note how, ignoring the hardware cost for a moment, the top-of-the-line 16-processor IBM pSeries machine running zeus supports 2.5x more users than the best-available 8-processor IIS server.) Also, zeus (and, may be, netscape enterprise, etc.) is known to have better single-machine scalability because of serveral interesting I/O techniques it tends to use---these benefits are more pronounced when run on operating systems like solaris that support fine-grained user-level threads to kernel-level thread mappings. On top of the raw performance, many also support application-level clustering and redundancy (may be important for some portal sites that demand underlying data consistency, and, which, therefore, require more app-level work to scale-up/failover than just adding more server instances). However, for the vast majority of the sites out there that serve out mostly static and simple dynamic traffic, I think apache is more than sufficient (these sites tend to be bottlenecked by the n/w, not by the server), and I would pick apache anyday over IIS for simplicity, stability, and security reasons (even the humble tux server almost matches the best-available IIS5.0 on the same hardware in the benchmark above in terms of performance; there is no need to go into security/stability comparisons).

Remove one of them. Apparently, Dan Bernstein switches from OpenBSD to FreeBSD. He observed, as can be seen on his cr.yp.to mainpage, a large number of OpenBSD crashes including following:

2002.02.26 ~17:30 GMT through ~19:30 GMT: OpenBSD network stack crash. The load was not heavy (about 20 web downloads per second from slashdot, plus a few mail deliveries per second) and presumably would have been handled without trouble by the FreeBSD network stack.

Looks like as if OpenBSD was /.-ed.

FreeBSD is what the article is referring to, not OpenBSD. FreeBSD does in fact support SMP

For more info, check out the FreeBSD Release Engineering Page

Disclaimer:
Yes, there's a slight chance you might come across some new bug in the 4.x tree; however, it's unlikely.

Linux and FreeBSD are two completely different operating systems. Microsoft's not *entirely* stupid, they did choose FreeBSD after all.

Netcraft says:
The site www.wehavethewayout.com is running Rapidsite/Apa-1.3.14 (Unix) FrontPage/4.0.4.3 mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.5a on FreeBSD.

Why not just get an i386 box and use FreeBSD-jails?
More here.
Bye, Jonas

I know this might come out as a saleproposal but it's really not. Turnpike is a CMS written completely in C# for you who do use the MS plattform (or thinking of using .NET for either FreeBSD or DOTgnu). It's made by a team of Swedes.

Use Xephem -- you download and compile the source 'cuz it was developed for Unix systems, hence its Linux & FreeBSD friendly. Its also a FreeBSD port, which makes it trivial for you to install should you be so fortunate as to be running that OS.

Use Xephem -- you download and compile the source 'cuz it was developed for Unix systems, hence its Linux & FreeBSD friendly. Its also a FreeBSD port, which makes it trivial for you to install should you be so fortunate as to be running that OS.

It is being sponsored by DARPA.

Cool stuff. They built it with security in mind and it runs under:
Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Solaris.

Check it here

Reference: Slackware SU man page

Why GNU su does not support the wheel group (by Richard Stallman)
Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over
all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the
MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator
password on the Twenex system and keeping it secret from
everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give
power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I
wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)

However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under
the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root pass
word who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he can tell
the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this
impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.

I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If
you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in
whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at
first.

He's smart, but he's an idiot, too.

FreeBSD Status Reports.

You might find this problem report helpful, then... it is nice and easy to make adduser become samba-friendly, although I do wish that this would make it into the default release.

After a second read, that article has some interesting implications. Sounds like Wind River is following a strategy similar to Apple's Mac OS X: microkernel downstairs + BSD layer upstairs.

That kind of sucks for FreeBSD's users. Because of the business-friendly BSD license, there is nothing the FreeBSD developers can do to prevent Wind River from using their code like this. Plus, because FreeBSD's source code is kept in a public CVS server, Wind River can freely check-in their code changes, like it or not! >:-\

Don't forget about all the great features being incorporated from the TrustedBSD project into FreeBSD 5.0 .. brand new jail implementation and ACL come to mind.

Its another sad fact that much of the information on usenet/the web about CVS dates from version 0.0.1_beta, and says "CVS is at a beta stage, and can.t be trusted for mission critical work". Many people believe this is still the case, because there is no practical means to recall the comments.

I have used Clearcase and Teamware as well as CVS, and CVS is the cheapest, easiest to use, and most reliable of the three. It is also the one most widely used by morons. If you want a demonstration of CVS in action on large projects then try FreeBSD

That's the 4.4BSD license, a license that predates FreeBSD (and the other open-source BSDs). It contains the dreaded "advertising clause," which is (IMHO) rightfully viewed as non-free. That's why FreeBSD uses this license which drops the advertising clause and is almost universally viewed as a free license; the other open-source BSDs did the same thing.

-Ed

Or better yet, a working filesystem that doesn't need journaling to patch a hole because it's just plain broken?

... since I always get flamed or moderated down when I say things like this on Slashdot, but what you're looking for is FreeBSD (with Linux emulation if you need to run closed-source stuff).

How feasible would it be for someone to take a computer and have it do nothing but pattern-matching through all the source code in a typical Linux distribution, looking specifically for problem areas like these?

For longer answer, read this:

• Secure Programming: Buffer Overflow by David Wheeler
• Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit by Aleph One
• Buffer Overruns, whats the real story? by Lefty
• Finding and exploiting programs with buffer overflows by Prym
• Stack Smashing Security Vulnerabilities by Nathan Smith
• Buffer Overflows by The FreeBSD Documentation Project
• Linux/ix86 buffer overflows by Willy Tarreau
• SunOS 4.1/Sparc buffer overflows by Willy Tarreau
• The Tao of Windows Buffer Overflow
• Buffer Overflows: Why, How and Prevention by Nicole LaRock Decker

-Peter

-Peter

Yeah, not like there are any other examples of open source software based on proprietry software.

tlhf

xxx

Also, your linked article talks about a compiler which compiles itself. IE, GCC recognising GCC. Having GCC regocnise BCC, VC++, et al would be insanly difficult. Even more so in this case as Mono is being released after the Microsoft compiler.

more proof that linux is developed by children and childish adults, while real OSs are Developed by professionals.

its been said hundreds of times: linux is for children who hate microsoft, bsd is for people who love unix.

Why Linux can't follow in the supposedly-inferior BSD's footsteps is beyond me.

zlib is one of the main reasons I don't use Linux.

Before downloading your patch, maybe consider downloading FreeBSD instead. =)

NetBSD's got a very nice rc (startup) system; as opposed to the monolithic (Open|Free)BSD approach, NetBSD's is a highly modular dependancy based model; no more giving scripts esoteric names like "000.wibble" to try to get it executed before "001.wobble"; just add a dependency in wobble on wibble and the rc system will make sure wibble is executed first.

There's an interesting PDF paper on the design and implimentation, some conciderably more terse and less interesting official documentation and a Daemon News article, and for those uber geeks, the CVS repository where you can compare with the other BSD's.

You'll note FreeBSD -CURRENT is looking at adopting it, while Open sticks with the tried and tested BSD4.4-type setup

There is certainly a subset of users using Linux, developing interesting applications, and whatnot, but they are reportedly a sad minority.

On the other hand, hope can be found in the relative poverty of respectable organizations in China - they can't really afford Microsoft software, and are therefore more likely to look at free software for open, legitimate purposes.

On the gripping hand...But I ramble.

From FreeBSD's port archive, this will fix 3.0.2:

ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/patches/SA- 02:13/openssh.patch

> Seems like the perfect time for BSD to enter the 21st century.

Actually, FreeBSD seems to be moving more towards Win2k-style ACPI support in -CURRENT (although that's more of a gut-feeling[tm] than a hard fact; I'm sure someone else can elaborate)

Aside from flaky hardware (which you can turn off in most cases), this is a Good Thing, although you can be sure you'll be able to turn it off in FreeBSD if the need arrises.

http://www.jp.freebsd.org/acpi/ seems to be about the best page I can find on this.

No big news here. Linux has sufficient ACPI support for most uses, as does FreeBSD. The full, nasty, evil interpreter may not work, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

- Read only media are a true blessing. You are never more than a reboot away from a clean system.

- Their unreliability makes them more secure, since if they go bad, the router just dies at the next reboot, which is ultimate security, however frustrating.

- They are only used every couple of months when you upgrade.

- They are low-power and have no spin noise.

- They are found on the cheapest hardware.

This kinda seems like PicoBSD a free, small BSD dist for this purpose... along with others.

I meant documentation... Should have previewed! Also check out picoBSD at: http://people.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd.html. I've never used it but it appears to be a floppy distro of FreeBSD specific to firewalls / gateways / etc. Worth a look most likely.

FreeBSD is working on an x86-64 GCC! Actually AMD itself has sponsored this! Take a look at the link!

Besides, it sounds like you're facing a grown-up problem. Why not use a grown-up filesystem and/or a grown-up operating system?

I think this article is basically ZDNet trolling again. After all, the more "controversial" the article, the more hits they get = more ad revenue.

So today's developers will use one of three languages: Java, C# or VB.Net.

Strange, a lot of projects I'm familiar with don't use any one of those languages. I think it depends who you talk to.

I think the author believes in two common fallacies:

1. C++ has some plus signs after it, so it must be a replacement for C
2. All problems in systems programming are trivial and have already been solved, and will never need solved again, so there's no need for really low-level languages.

I'm sure the argument is a lot more valid for big corporations, but they've always been bastions of VB and "4GL's" (even when 4GL was just a marketing term). Basically, /. has been trolled again.

There are a couple of extremely stable kernels out there...

There sure are. Here's one and here's another.

C-X C-S

Apple didn't use NetBSD, they use FreeBSD!

If you're running FreeBSD check on this:
FreeBSD has issued the following FreeBSD Security Advisory regarding the UCD-SNMP / NET-SNMP package:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/advisorie s/ FreeBSD-SA-02:09.snmp.asc.

They should just license the food to the shelters under the BSD license! Here is food...do what you will with it.

Snapshotting is what you really want for something like this. NetApp has had this functionality available in their Filer appliances for a number of years - you can cd into a 'magic' .snapshot directory where hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots are kept.

FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT includes preliminary snapshot support for ffs.

The Linux options aren't quite as good. The most promising new filesystem that could provide this functionality is tux2, where data is structured in a way that would make implementing this functionality fairly easy. There was a post explaining how it would work in the mail archives, but they seem to have disappeared.

There is commercial option: MVD Snap. Their fileserver is Linux based, and the code for their snapfs filesystem was once available during beta testing.

The ans wer is, by the way, that it doesn't affect Debian in any meaningful way.

• The standard does not require that Debian drop its own packaging scheme.
• The standard does not mandate the use of RPM packaging within the distribution.

Read the standard; it's not particularly painful to read.

A much more entertaining thing is to think about how this might affect folks using FreeBSD It is entirely possible that this standard allows FreeBSD, which is conspicuously not Linux as well as not based on RPM packaging, to nonetheless become a nicely "compliant" Linux Standard Base platform.

Heck, Microsoft might be able to modify the "Unix Emulation" environment they have running on Windows NT (it's sold as something; I don't recall the name...) become compliant with LSB

This wouldn't be any stranger than when Microsoft made Windows NT a "POSIX" platform, or when IBM got OS/390 certified as a Branded Unix (tm)

The notion that this creates some massive problem for Debian is just plain ignorant, and when the article links to the publicly-available-on-the-web standard, being so ignorant is quite inexcuable.